Selina’s Music Corner.

How slow is slow?

I have come to realize that one of my biggest challenges in teaching is getting my students to play slowly enough!
You may think that this is a strange thing to say but I really believe that it is the one skill that can help us with all of our technical and musical issues.

When first learning a piece playing slowly gives you more time to think about where to find notes, how to move, make sensible fingering choices, listen to what you are playing and most importantly play in time!

This last point is absolutely vital. When we first start a new piece we are very excited and want to get stuck in, play it through and hear what it sounds like. Depending on the difficulty of the piece this approach has varying levels of success!
Of course there is nothing wrong with this and I think it is important and fun to ‘have a go’, but if we want to learn the piece properly we have to be patient and consider all aspects of the music.
When you first try there will be some bits that sound ok.
However there will also be bits where you struggle with reading the notes (for example in the higher register), where the rhythm is difficult to count, where you have to make decisions about left and right hand fingers and where you simply cannot move your fingers fast enough yet.

It is NOT ok to let the speed of your playing to change to allow for these initial problems!!
It is also NOT ok to ‘worry about the rhythm later’!!!

What we need to do is learn the rhythm as a priority. You can do this without playing a note using clapping, counting, singing and tapping your foot.

We can learn difficult notes, chords and fingering separately taking them away from the context of the music in short sections, often less than a bar long.

We need to break the music up into phrases so that we can focus better as Adrian described in his last blog.

The important thing to remember is that you can only play as fast as you can think and this is not very fast when you are first looking at a piece.
If you work on more difficult sections more slowly or, as is more often the case, without rhythm so that you give your fingers more time to find the notes then your fingers are actually learning the wrong movement and it will become a habit that is very difficult to break.

I am not advocating that you cannot play the piece through at all until all the details are sorted out. You can organize your time to practice different aspects of the piece separately.
It is important that you have an idea what the piece sounds like as a whole and you do not have to go on to Youtube to do this!
Rather play the melody, play the bass and do the counting.
Work on the piece in the ways that I have suggested but when you are putting everything together play slowly enough.

How slow is this?
It is the speed that enables you to think about what you are doing and that allows you time to reach all of the notes in the correct rhythm without changing the pulse.
You can keep a regular pulse with a metronome or your foot and you will know whether it is slow enough by how rushed or under pressure you feel or simply by whether you can keep up.
All the movements that you learn will be correct and will naturally speed up as you become more confident. It will not sound as good as the finished article but if you go down this route it will become that more quickly, and you will know your piece more thoroughly.

On the thinking side you can try playing slowly enough to be able to think out loud as you are playing like a commentary!
Choose single aspects to commentate on at any one time, for example fingering and position changes, counting, naming notes and musical shaping.

Playing slowly is not only for when you are learning new pieces.
When I have learnt my pieces or concert programmes I often practice exclusively slowly in the build up to a performance.
It helps in listening to the music, building confidence in my knowledge and in strength and stamina.
It is also quite relaxing!

I have come to realize that it is incredibly difficult for guitarists to play slowly.
I can usually only get my students to do it by forcing the issue with loud counting!
Often when a student is frustrated by getting something wrong I suggest that they play more slowly and they actually then play faster.

We often do not register how fast we are going and of course playing slowly means that we can lose the flow of the music because of the lack of sustain, and also means that we have to count!

This is quite a difficult road to travel but a very valuable and ultimately enjoyable one with excellent results if you persevere.

 

Selina.